Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Photos Land Eden Prairie Kids in Trouble
slim-t writes "The Star Tribune is reporting that students have been disciplined for photos of them on Facebook. 'Eden Prairie High School administrators have reprimanded more than 100 students and suspended some from sports and other extracurricular activities after obtaining Facebook photos of students partying, several students said Tuesday.' Is the school right to do this? My opinion is that the students should know not to post pictures of yourself breaking the law."
I'd just like to know what all those administrators are doing cruising Facebook pages looking at the students in their school.
Looking for delectable jailbait, of course.
Won't somebody think of the children?
...
Er, wait
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Really, it seems kind of strange that school administrators would find these kinds of things without someone explicitly bringing it to their attention. Don't they have better things to do than sit around and look at pictures of the students? The argument could be made that this is pretty creepy.
Also, if the students are breaking the law outside of school hours, isn't that a matter for the police and not the school?
I don;t use Facebook, but don't they have a feature to group people by what school they attend? An administrator would just have to sign up for his own school then just browse profiles while filling out detention slips.
Maybe it will be a good lesson to these idiots not to document their wrong-doing.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Time to repeal the drinking age.
This isn't a "rights online" question. It's a natural consequence of the stupid prohibition laws we have. They need to be repealed.
If the only way anyone found out about the drinking was looking at Facebook after the fact, then how was it harmful?
I think that the kids are pretty stupid to post photos of themselves doing illegal things on the Internet, but neither is it the administrators' business to be scouring Facebook for such things. Their job is to deal with things as they're brought to their attention, not be a surveillance force.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
First off, the kid is a liar.
Second of all, if he's freely distributing evidence of himself breaking the law, he's lucky it's just his school that is punishing him.
Third, he's lucky it's just him getting punished and not his parents.
Kid breaks law, gets in trouble. The internet was mildly involved. News at 10:00. Bitching on Slashdot at 9:30.
She scans her students myspace pages all the time. It's pretty incredible what kind of information they put up.
:)
She doesn't do it because she's out to get them, though. If she learned that a student was smoking weed at a weekend party, it's not like she'd call the cops on them. I think she does it just to get a better sense of who her students are as individuals, and can then better tailor her instructions to each individual.
Let's say Katie is really emotional, and loves to answer questions in class. However, Katie has just gone through a rough breakup with her longtime boyfriend (we learn over myspace)... My wife would be a bit more understanding about why Katie is acting so depressed.
Or, she may learn that a student routinely smokes pot in the bathroom every morning before class. She might pay extra attention to that student, and if she smells pot on the kid while he's in class, she can certainly get the administration involved.
Or kids might comment about a stolen test. Or how they hacked into the computers and changed grades. It's crazy what they'll write about.
The point is, of course, don't put up information that you don't want your boss, teacher/SO/parents/whoever to read.
Posting anonymously for hopefully obvious reasons.
Not to defend the school but, from the article, in MN, student athletes sign a pledge saying they will not drink alcohol. The article is not clear about how the school obtained the pictures, it is possible they were given to the school and the school did not go out to find them. But, when you have evidence showing kids doing something they pledged not to do, you have to act.
Similarly, if the kids had been busted by the police, the police would notify the schools and the kids would be suspended from games. The article does make it sound like the only punishment has been to kids in sports.
When I was in HS, in MN and on a football team, another kid got busted for underage consumption and was suspended for 2 games.
Supposedly the pics were delivered on a CD (maybe a DVD) to school administrators. The person who delivered it is either unknown or not being identified. (disclosure/source: My sister-in-law attends EPHS. I'm anonymous for her sake.)
Knowing several teachers, I have to ask this: is it at all (naively) possible that this admin is doing what he thought best? It seems to me like he's trying to straighten out these kids' lives (at least by his interpretation of life, mind you.)
It's surprising, I know, but some teachers actually care about their students. Not just whether they make the school look good at scholastic meets and football games, not just whether they pass all their (irrelevant) standardized tests. Some teachers care whether or not Joe Quarterback makes it home from prom nite. They actually care whether Suzie Cheerleader makes it home from prom nite unfertilized.
Just a thought. I didn't have the greatest high school experiences myself, but even I know not all school officials are malicious animals prowling 'That Facebook Thing' for whom they may devour.
There is, in fact, some middle ground left to on which to stand.
Being Swedish I find your alcohol policy absolutely bizarre. Schools policing students about what they do in their spare time? If a teacher did that over here they would probably get into legal difficulties as a result of it... Heck, my physics department has a student run pub in the basement and one of my lecturers even gave the students some time to advertise it. Despite of this ( or maybe because of ) we have a lower rate of alcohol induced diseases and a lower alcohol related crime rate.
I'm guessing this is the consequence of some "traditional" political opinions, much like Sweden insisting on having a state monopoly on alcohol, despite it being quite clearly demonstrated that it does nothing to prevent minors from obtaining it ( which is pretty much the argument in favor ).
Personally, at my school, they have a policy that if you violate a policy outside of school grounds within sight of a school official, or a school official is latter reported of the policy you broke, you will be reprimanded as if you were on school premise. People don't seem to remember that youth are still citizens, and are granted all the rights of the constitution. Schools extend and deploy their power in scary ways, forever under the umbrella "For the Children."
http://www.youthrights.org/
You say you're a nerd who is picked on by the popular jocks. Do I have a plan for you!
1) Take a buddy nerd and sneak into a party where your victim will be (since you're a nerd you obviously weren't invited)
2) Hand the jock a beer, have your friend snap a picture during that second he's holding it (but before you're being pounded with it)
3) Post picture to Facebook using a fake account
4) Wait for jock to be suspended
I'm still trying to figure out how to fit "Profit!" into there as well. Maybe blackmail?
All these "well you shouldn't have posted the picture" posts are forgetting the very common case where someone snaps pictures of a bunch of people and posts them all onto Facebook. It's amazing how fast the camera phones can go off if you do something stupid even for a second at a party.
- A fellow fourth grade student was caught possessing a beeper at school. FCPS believed the only reason anyone would possess a beeper would be to facilitate selling drugs. The student was expelled. His mother had given him the beeper the previous day so he would know when she was ready to pick him up from soccer practice. FCPS kept the ban on cell phones and beepers until 9/11, but not before threatening to suspend students who were trying to contact parents who worked in the Pentagon that day.
- A girl at my middle school was caught with a can of pepper spray. Her parents had given her the mace because she lived less than one mile from the school (FCPS does not provide transportation to students less than 1 mi from school) and had to walk through a rough neighborhood each day. She was suspended.
- My school once let out early and had a student fair on the soccer field. Attendance on the field was not mandatory, but students could not leave school grounds without a note from a parent. The administration was so concerned with our attendance that every student who left early had their car fully searched to make sure they weren't taking home other students.
Unfortunately, FCPS holds all bargaining chips before students even enroll. They force each student sign a "Student Responsibilities and Rights" document essentially stating you understand FCPS has the right to deal with you any way they please should you screw up. If you don't sign it, they won't give you a locker, a parking spot, nor allow you to participate in after school activities.If school administrators stumble upon pictures of a student doing something illegal, but not while at school, they should report it to the police, and the buck stops there. If a student's "extra-cirricular" activities don't interfere with school, then schools shouldn't interfere with them.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend who saw the school principal at the grocery store. After making eye contact, he gave him the middle finger. The principal was understandably irate and the following Monday suspended him.
When his parents found out, they called the principal and made it abundantly clear that he was far, far outside his bounds and pushed until the school rescinded the suspension. Don't think he didn't suffer consequences, they were just delivered by his parents whose duty it is to do so outside of school.
The duty of school officials is to discipline and teach students within the school environment. From 8-3 or on school grounds, that's it. Period. The minute the child leaves school grounds, he's under the purview of the law and his guardians. The second school officials leave the school grounds, they're just average folks. No legitimate power over and above any other schmo.
Probably delivered by a kid who got picked on by the popular alcohol chugging kids.
I was in the EP school system from Kindergarten until halfway through 9th Grade... and I recall it was pretty clique-ish and people were particularly nasty and cruel to other kids.
Most people might say it's the same in every high school, but I went to 3 high schools my freshman year (EPHS inclusive). And the high school in Connecticut and especially the high school in Arizona were a LOT nicer in terms of students' attitudes and treatment of other students.
Sounds like revenge!
I'm from Eden Prairie.
"I'd just like to know what all those administrators are doing cruising Facebook pages looking at the students in their school."
Short answer: They weren't.
An anonymous person stopped by the high school and dropped off a CD containing the images saved off numerous Facebook sites.
Links as well, I believe, but am not sure. Of course speculation is that it was some kid who wasn't invited; I rather speculate it was a parent who was sick of the hypocrisy of the rules never being enforced, and dropped it off to confront the administration and FORCE them to act.
And for the Europeans who feel our 'policies on alcohol are bizarre': let's remember - to participate in student athletics in Minnesota, EVERY student must sign a pledge to entirely abstain from alcohol or tobacco as a student athlete, and (as I recall, it was 20 years ago I was in EPHS) even to avoid being PRESENT at such activities. Say what you want about the motivation behind the rule, the simple fact is that every one of them signed such a promise and are now blatantly proved to be breaking it. Busted.
My cynical view is that I would like to know WHEN this CD was dropped off. EP is a perennial powerhouse dominant in the local football league...coincidentally football season *just* ended 6 weeks ago. So no real penalties nor damage to the football team.
-Styopa